Anyway, I quit games. I was sick of playing for hours and hours to get nowhere and have done nothing; all my peers lament their lack of lives and wasted hours, but every night they're back at it again.
The vast majority of human beings lament their lack of something and complain about how what they're currently doing is keeping them away from it, but still go back to what they're doing again. Workaholic executives wish they could spend more time with their families, but they keep doing what they're doing because they love the power and freedom that what they're doing brings them. Family men wish they had more money, but keep doing what they're doing because of the love and joy that their family brings them. Models wish they could just sit down and eat an entire extra cheese pizza with pepperoni and sausage on it every night, but they keep doing what they're doing because they like the way they look, the money they get, and the perks that come with their status.
There are only so many hours in a day, there are only so many years in a person's life, and there are only so many things that we can focus on without juggling too many things and screwing them all up. Everyone has a problem with the fact that they can't have their cake and eat it too, but they usually get some enjoyment out of either eating or having the cake. Your friends may lament their lack of lives, but if they're anything like the gamers that I know, they're clearly enjoying what they're doing, despite the fact that it keeps them from doing other things they would also like to be doing.
I doubt it--my driver's license number is two fewer digits than a SS, and starts with the letter W.
Not likely.
It depends on the state. In some states, it's driver's license number and the social security number are completely different. In others, the driver's license number is the social security number put through a simple algorithm. In states like New Jersey (at least the last time I checked), your driver's license number is your SSN and that's it.
Both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are marketing euphemisms that try to make a political opinion more positive. Both have to be "pro-" something because "pro-" is an inherently positive, reaffirming prefix and both try to connect a simple idea ("I'm for the right to abort!" or "I'm against the right to abort!") with a word that sounds very positive and politically correct, thus the "pro-" is added to "choice" or "life". Put simply, it's total fucking bullshit.
The exact wording may be changed slightly, but I think you get the idea. The person that strays from "life" and "choice" and into something more reasonable like "abortion", "abortion rights", "the right to abort", etc. is the only one worth listening to, because they're the most likely to view the discussion in a reasonable manner.
Ahh, good, so if as a consumer I want to read a protected document on my Palm instead of my PC, all I have to do is go back to college, get an advanced math degree, bring myself up to speed on the state of the art in encryption, learn how to program on both platforms, figure out the encoding the document uses, write an app to crack it, and I'm all set.
Apparently, according to one of the quoted portions of the DMCA above, that would constitute manufacturing a circumvention device, and thus would be illegal. You could, theoretically, be hauled off to court for it if someone found out about it and the law were vigorously enforced.
(2)
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
(A)
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
I dunno, would you pay 15-20 cents for a commercial-free half-hour show, on demand? That sounds pretty reasonable to me, since I don't even have to lift a finger to do the commercial skip I would with a TiVo.
If one man offers me something for free and another man right next to him offers me the same exact thing for 15 or 20 cents, I think I'm going to take the free one, and I think most consumers would, as well.
It's not as if this is the difference between a 128kbps encoded MP3 and a 2-disc CD set with pretty art and CD quality music. A TV show without commercials is a TV show without commercials, regardless of whether you're getting it from a PVR or Video On Demand from your cable company.
As others have noted, it's Elcomsoft on trial now, not Dmitry, but I don't think that's really the important issue here. I think what's really important is that Elcomsoft is probably guilty of breaking this law and that their best hope is to get convicted and then have the law itself struck down on appeal.
It's not "taking one for the team". I think it's probably a reasonable legal strategy when you've been convicted of a dubious law that has not been tested in court.
I would guess it is also possible for networks to start doing what they do during soccer games when they can't take breaks -- scroll the add on top of the programming.
UPN, TNT, and several other networks and cable channels already do this, despite the fact that they do it during shows that have lengthy commercial breaks. They have big, colorful, animated popups show up on the bottom of the screen.
AI will not be advanced enough, IMHO. You won't say "How far to nearest gas station", you will probably be more limited in how you can ask your question. It might be close to "Car, distance to gas station, nearest" or some other limited syntax.
I've thought of this at length since I started reading more about AIML and I honestly just can't figure out what's so difficult about it. A program for a car would have a limited set of possible conversations, since all of them would apply to cars, so it should be easy to just input all of the possible variables.
For instance, if you wanted to program it to allow as many "commands" (aliases for a command, I suppose you could say) as possible, you could just manually put them all in. For finding the nearest gas station, the program could allow "Car, find the nearest gas station", "Car, where's the nearest gas station?", "Car, direct me to the nearest gas station", etc., and all of them with extra variables so that "please" could be added in before "car", after "car", or at the end of the command. Sure, it's time consuming, but that's what the programmers would be paid for.
Go ahead and read the article. I read it first, became really excited about the movie, and then watched the trailer and thought, "Well, damn. That spoiled way too much."
This doesn't seem like The Matrix or any of those other "the experience is drastically changed after you know 'The Secret'" types of movies. The article just outlines the environment, but not the plot, which is absolutely fine.
The parent poster explained that this was a relatively new feature in Linux. You point out how this new feature and its instructions are complicated, but you (and he, to some extent) fail to step back and see the really important point here: Linux implements new features immediately that are sort of hard to use for awhile, while Windows implements new features two years from now in the next version of Windows for over $100.
Also worth noting was that this new feature was optional. It was not crucial, but if he wanted it, it was free and could be downloaded immediately.
Why doesn't anybody ever release the secure version in the first place?
Why sell anyone the secure version when you can sell them the insecure version AND the secure version, in that order?
Re:Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: 2
Capturing a music vid or FM broadcast is now an extremely trivial job and the quality of the recording that results is every bit as good as those 128Kbps MP3 files that are so freely traded on P2P networks.
Unless they mean 128Kbps MP3 files encoded by a retarded chimp on a 386 while smoking crack, I'd like to know where they got this futuristic alien space radio that sounds as good as a 128Kbps MP3. Where I come from (I affectionately call it "Planet Earth"), FM radio does not sound that good. It doesn't even sound as good as those internet radio streams that are at like 30-somethingKbps.
Yeah, well, at least they're getting exactly what they deserve. Hopefully they'll get some more of it when the damn thing premieres on the Sci-Fi Channel.
If you think "why would someone build these lines?", you should really be asking yourself why would people build the:
-pyramids
-great wall of china
-world trade center
Arrogance, protection, and money, in that order. The pyramids were built by the pharoahs pretty much because they were big and awesome and they didn't really care if slaves died in the process of stroking the pharoah's ego.
The Great Wall of China, if I remember correctly, was for border defense. China, like Rome, was an impressive civilization surrounded by roaming bands of barbarous tribes. So, of course, the roaming bands of barbarous tribes tried to destroy the impressive civilization so they could get its goods, and the Chinese needed to hold them back, and apparently decided that the best defense of their huge border was a single, unified defensive structure.
The World Trade Center was probably built mostly for monetary purposes, because having your corporation's offices housed one of the largest buildings in New York City holds a certain prestige.
The key, of course, is that the Egyptians, Romans, and Americans have left written records of their lives and intentions. The people in this case did no such thing, so we just have to guess.
I'm surprised I'm not seeing the really simple, obvious answer here to the question that's posed in the story.
do you think the answer to having a massive and unreliable network is to build a second identical network?
Don't build a second identical network. Just set it up so that whenever a file is saved, it's dumped onto a secondary network that's locked down so tightly that it doesn't run programs, search for documents, or anything like that. It just provides documents and that's it. For instance, it could be just a bare bones, huge-ass listing of links to patient data in a single document, and you would just use Ctrl+F or some such to find the name, and then click through it to see a TXT or HTML document with the patient's data in it. That way, you can have fancy programs and extensive information and such on the normal network without risking the network instability that comes with them.
He gave as an extreme example the possibility that a mouse making human sperm might accidentally be allowed to mate with a mouse that had made its eggs from human cells.
Na na na na na na MOUSE MAN! MOUSE MAN! MOUSE MAN!
Quickly Sparrow, to the Mouse Cave!
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
·
· Score: 2
As far as I can figure, that was the long, technical way of saying that once they get past the basic genetic hurdles of creating hybrid, such as finding a genetic match that won't just break down immediately, they still have to get past the fact that the mouse's immune system will try to reject the new cells. The easiest way around that would be to pretty much destroy its immune system, but as millions of AIDS patients can attest, that's not exactly a good idea for your prolonged health.
But hey, I work with my computer, I guess Josticks all come in USB now so you don't really mind.
No, joysticks do not all come in USB now. If you're willing to take the serial port version of a joystick, you can get it for $3-$7 at just about any store that carries them in the United States, including Wal-Mart and Target. If you want the USB version of THE SAME DAMN THING, you have to pay at least $20 for it. Yet another reason why the serial port is a Good Thing for everyone that uses computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, I quit games. I was sick of playing for hours and hours to get nowhere and have done nothing; all my peers lament their lack of lives and wasted hours, but every night they're back at it again.
The vast majority of human beings lament their lack of something and complain about how what they're currently doing is keeping them away from it, but still go back to what they're doing again. Workaholic executives wish they could spend more time with their families, but they keep doing what they're doing because they love the power and freedom that what they're doing brings them. Family men wish they had more money, but keep doing what they're doing because of the love and joy that their family brings them. Models wish they could just sit down and eat an entire extra cheese pizza with pepperoni and sausage on it every night, but they keep doing what they're doing because they like the way they look, the money they get, and the perks that come with their status.
There are only so many hours in a day, there are only so many years in a person's life, and there are only so many things that we can focus on without juggling too many things and screwing them all up. Everyone has a problem with the fact that they can't have their cake and eat it too, but they usually get some enjoyment out of either eating or having the cake. Your friends may lament their lack of lives, but if they're anything like the gamers that I know, they're clearly enjoying what they're doing, despite the fact that it keeps them from doing other things they would also like to be doing.
I doubt it--my driver's license number is two fewer digits than a SS, and starts with the letter W.
Not likely.
It depends on the state. In some states, it's driver's license number and the social security number are completely different. In others, the driver's license number is the social security number put through a simple algorithm. In states like New Jersey (at least the last time I checked), your driver's license number is your SSN and that's it.
They haven't read the book most likely. Took me a second but I got it. ...
Heck, a lot of people probably don't even know that the reference "big brother" is from there as well
A person that has read 1984 assumes that everyone else around them is incredibly stupid. I am shocked and horrified. SHOCKED and HORRIFIED, I say!
They're just tired of having bandwidth wasted?
Wasted on what? What the consumer bought "unlimited internet" for?
Your Handy Abortion Rant Guide:
Pro-choice & Anti-choice = Pro-abortion bias
Pro-life & pro-abortion = Anti-abortion bias
Pro-abortion & anti-abortion = Reasonable Individual
Both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are marketing euphemisms that try to make a political opinion more positive. Both have to be "pro-" something because "pro-" is an inherently positive, reaffirming prefix and both try to connect a simple idea ("I'm for the right to abort!" or "I'm against the right to abort!") with a word that sounds very positive and politically correct, thus the "pro-" is added to "choice" or "life". Put simply, it's total fucking bullshit.
The exact wording may be changed slightly, but I think you get the idea. The person that strays from "life" and "choice" and into something more reasonable like "abortion", "abortion rights", "the right to abort", etc. is the only one worth listening to, because they're the most likely to view the discussion in a reasonable manner.
Ahh, good, so if as a consumer I want to read a protected document on my Palm instead of my PC, all I have to do is go back to college, get an advanced math degree, bring myself up to speed on the state of the art in encryption, learn how to program on both platforms, figure out the encoding the document uses, write an app to crack it, and I'm all set.
Apparently, according to one of the quoted portions of the DMCA above, that would constitute manufacturing a circumvention device, and thus would be illegal. You could, theoretically, be hauled off to court for it if someone found out about it and the law were vigorously enforced.
(2)
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
(A)
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
It's great to see you're so well versed with the case. In fact, the affidavit alleges that he was selling the software on US soil.
Not he, they. ElcomSoft is on trial, not Dmitry. Otherwise, you're right.
I dunno, would you pay 15-20 cents for a commercial-free half-hour show, on demand? That sounds pretty reasonable to me, since I don't even have to lift a finger to do the commercial skip I would with a TiVo.
If one man offers me something for free and another man right next to him offers me the same exact thing for 15 or 20 cents, I think I'm going to take the free one, and I think most consumers would, as well.
It's not as if this is the difference between a 128kbps encoded MP3 and a 2-disc CD set with pretty art and CD quality music. A TV show without commercials is a TV show without commercials, regardless of whether you're getting it from a PVR or Video On Demand from your cable company.
As others have noted, it's Elcomsoft on trial now, not Dmitry, but I don't think that's really the important issue here. I think what's really important is that Elcomsoft is probably guilty of breaking this law and that their best hope is to get convicted and then have the law itself struck down on appeal.
It's not "taking one for the team". I think it's probably a reasonable legal strategy when you've been convicted of a dubious law that has not been tested in court.
I would guess it is also possible for networks to start doing what they do during soccer games when they can't take breaks -- scroll the add on top of the programming.
UPN, TNT, and several other networks and cable channels already do this, despite the fact that they do it during shows that have lengthy commercial breaks. They have big, colorful, animated popups show up on the bottom of the screen.
AI will not be advanced enough, IMHO. You won't say "How far to nearest gas station", you will probably be more limited in how you can ask your question. It might be close to "Car, distance to gas station, nearest" or some other limited syntax.
I've thought of this at length since I started reading more about AIML and I honestly just can't figure out what's so difficult about it. A program for a car would have a limited set of possible conversations, since all of them would apply to cars, so it should be easy to just input all of the possible variables.
For instance, if you wanted to program it to allow as many "commands" (aliases for a command, I suppose you could say) as possible, you could just manually put them all in. For finding the nearest gas station, the program could allow "Car, find the nearest gas station", "Car, where's the nearest gas station?", "Car, direct me to the nearest gas station", etc., and all of them with extra variables so that "please" could be added in before "car", after "car", or at the end of the command. Sure, it's time consuming, but that's what the programmers would be paid for.
Go ahead and read the article. I read it first, became really excited about the movie, and then watched the trailer and thought, "Well, damn. That spoiled way too much."
This doesn't seem like The Matrix or any of those other "the experience is drastically changed after you know 'The Secret'" types of movies. The article just outlines the environment, but not the plot, which is absolutely fine.
The parent poster explained that this was a relatively new feature in Linux. You point out how this new feature and its instructions are complicated, but you (and he, to some extent) fail to step back and see the really important point here: Linux implements new features immediately that are sort of hard to use for awhile, while Windows implements new features two years from now in the next version of Windows for over $100.
Also worth noting was that this new feature was optional. It was not crucial, but if he wanted it, it was free and could be downloaded immediately.
Why doesn't anybody ever release the secure version in the first place?
Why sell anyone the secure version when you can sell them the insecure version AND the secure version, in that order?
Capturing a music vid or FM broadcast is now an extremely trivial job and the quality of the recording that results is every bit as good as those 128Kbps MP3 files that are so freely traded on P2P networks.
Unless they mean 128Kbps MP3 files encoded by a retarded chimp on a 386 while smoking crack, I'd like to know where they got this futuristic alien space radio that sounds as good as a 128Kbps MP3. Where I come from (I affectionately call it "Planet Earth"), FM radio does not sound that good. It doesn't even sound as good as those internet radio streams that are at like 30-somethingKbps.
Yeah, well, at least they're getting exactly what they deserve. Hopefully they'll get some more of it when the damn thing premieres on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Hmmm... that's really interesting. Do you have a link for that? I'd love to read it.
Personally, I'd name it "Mecha Mozilla".
If you think "why would someone build these lines?", you should really be asking yourself why would people build the:
-pyramids
-great wall of china
-world trade center
Arrogance, protection, and money, in that order. The pyramids were built by the pharoahs pretty much because they were big and awesome and they didn't really care if slaves died in the process of stroking the pharoah's ego.
The Great Wall of China, if I remember correctly, was for border defense. China, like Rome, was an impressive civilization surrounded by roaming bands of barbarous tribes. So, of course, the roaming bands of barbarous tribes tried to destroy the impressive civilization so they could get its goods, and the Chinese needed to hold them back, and apparently decided that the best defense of their huge border was a single, unified defensive structure.
The World Trade Center was probably built mostly for monetary purposes, because having your corporation's offices housed one of the largest buildings in New York City holds a certain prestige.
The key, of course, is that the Egyptians, Romans, and Americans have left written records of their lives and intentions. The people in this case did no such thing, so we just have to guess.
I'm surprised I'm not seeing the really simple, obvious answer here to the question that's posed in the story.
do you think the answer to having a massive and unreliable network is to build a second identical network?
Don't build a second identical network. Just set it up so that whenever a file is saved, it's dumped onto a secondary network that's locked down so tightly that it doesn't run programs, search for documents, or anything like that. It just provides documents and that's it. For instance, it could be just a bare bones, huge-ass listing of links to patient data in a single document, and you would just use Ctrl+F or some such to find the name, and then click through it to see a TXT or HTML document with the patient's data in it. That way, you can have fancy programs and extensive information and such on the normal network without risking the network instability that comes with them.
He gave as an extreme example the possibility that a mouse making human sperm might accidentally be allowed to mate with a mouse that had made its eggs from human cells.
Na na na na na na MOUSE MAN! MOUSE MAN! MOUSE MAN!
Quickly Sparrow, to the Mouse Cave!
As far as I can figure, that was the long, technical way of saying that once they get past the basic genetic hurdles of creating hybrid, such as finding a genetic match that won't just break down immediately, they still have to get past the fact that the mouse's immune system will try to reject the new cells. The easiest way around that would be to pretty much destroy its immune system, but as millions of AIDS patients can attest, that's not exactly a good idea for your prolonged health.
No registration required, courtesy of Google and the New York Times
Why aren't the articles just posted like this to begin with? It's something that NYT themselves set up.
The point of that expression is... To have your beautiful cake to admire and to be able to eat it at the same time.
Captain Obvious saves the day again!
But hey, I work with my computer, I guess Josticks all come in USB now so you don't really mind.
No, joysticks do not all come in USB now. If you're willing to take the serial port version of a joystick, you can get it for $3-$7 at just about any store that carries them in the United States, including Wal-Mart and Target. If you want the USB version of THE SAME DAMN THING, you have to pay at least $20 for it. Yet another reason why the serial port is a Good Thing for everyone that uses computers.